Re: Why is it Called a Package?

[Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com>]

On Fri, 7 Apr 2000, Robert A Duff wrote:

> Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com> writes:
> 
> > Oh, neither was I. I thought it was clear from your post that you were
> > talking about designing a new, Ada like language, from scratch, given 
> > the decades of experience with Ada and some other languages. 
> 
> Exactly.  Now how do I get somebody to pay me to do that?  ;-)

Kids today, all they care about is money...

Seriously, this is of course the reason why a "from scratch" redesign
isn't likely to take place. Perhaps "morphing" Ada 95 into a similar 
language (we have GNAT after all)  would be a better way to go about it. 

There have been a few proposals for (mostly upwards compatible) Ada 
extensions, including Mats Weber's and Jun Shen's. Those would be a 
nice place to start.

> > I think its unfortunate that anything connected with C or C++ causes
> > such a reaction in Ada fans. Consider that for most programmers Ada
> > elicits a similar knee-jerk response.
> 
> I agree, but for this particular case: the A[I] syntax is the way Pascal
> does it, too.
> 
> - Bob

And Algol-68, and others too. Its just annoying that "because C or C++
does this it must be bad" can be used as an argument. I realize that the 
person doing it this time used a smiley but it seems common. I think I'd 
still like Ada if "begin... end" were replaced by "{}", since the surface 
syntax, while important, is not nearly as important as the semantics. 

-- Brian